Think Again
Sudarsan Raghavan makes an ass of you and me:
As the U.S. military attempts to pacify Iraq so its leaders can pursue political reconciliation, Iraqi and Western observers say Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his inner circle appear increasingly unable to pull the government out of its paralysis.
The unwarranted assumption here is that the Iraqi government is in a state of “paralysis.” Raghavan and his fellows ought to consider the possibility that the Iraqi government is working just fine for the people who control it. The Iraqi government hasn’t reformed the constitution, passed an oil law or revised its deBaathification rules because it doesn’t suit a critical mass of the Iraqi government to do so. It does suit them to make regretful noises in the direction of the American government and media about this.
Iraqi leaders are drawing paychecks, receiving graft, collecting shrine-tourist revenue and, in the case of the Shiite leaders, seeing ever more of Baghdad come under the control of their co-sectarians. How is this “paralysis?”
Comment by roger —
August 5, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
That seems about right. It is just story no. 10 million in the American press that treats Iraq as a country with no history or culture – in fact, a fantasy. Thus, no reporter bothers, even, to look up the facts about the DAWA party, much less diffuse them to the American public. Much better to write stories that toe the line for the media’s second audience, the insider traders in opinion, so they have talking points on tv shows. Unrepresentative rich white guys can talk over a country about which they known nothing, and give fodder for other rich white guys to write opinion columns concerning a country about which they know nothing except falsehoods they’ve learned second hand. It isn’t called the fourth branch of government for nothin’!